Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Greater New Orleans

Change Region

comments

Pearl Harbor memories still strong for Metairie veteran after 72 years

Robert Templet.jpg

Pearl Harbor survivor Robert Templet, 93, of Metairie, was a 21-year-old Navy radioman third class stationed at Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese Navy launched its attack that thrust the United States into World War II. Templet is one of only four military veterans who survived the attack known to still be living in southeast Louisiana. He's one of the veterans to be featured Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013, during the annual ceremony at the Pearl Harbor Park on Paris Road in Chalmette.
(Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Frenchie, man your battle station." - The first order Robert Templet received during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Robert Templet's war began in Pearl Harbor on that Sunday morning 72 years ago, as he walked from his barracks along an asphalt street to the mess hall on Ford Island and heard in the distance what he thought were the sounds of gunnery practice.

The 21-year-old Navy radioman third class saw Japanese airplanes diving on the group of U.S. Navy battleships, anchored in rows aside the island. Bullets ripped into the street ahead of him. "Big old chunks of asphalt was flying up," Templet said.

Then came the bomber, its pilot maneuvering to attack the battleships. "He had his helmet up," Templet said. "He had his goggles up. He had a big smile. And there was a torpedo underneath it.

"He looked at me, dropped the torpedo and took off. Then I knew I was in trouble."

Sitting in the living room in Metairie home Thursday night, Templet closed his eyes and conjured images visible only to him. "I can still see that face, that tan-looking face," he said.

Born in New Orleans and raised in Lafourche Parish, Templet, now 93, is one of three known surviving local veterans who witnessed Japan's attack on Dec. 7, 1941. The surprise attack on the Navy's Hawaiian installation claimed more than 2,400 lives and thrust the United States into World War II.

Along with James Cook of Slidell and John DiBetta of St. Bernard Parish, Templet is one of three members who are still attending meetings of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association's Ed Jones Chapter and, like on Saturday's anniversary, attending to the annual ceremony at the Pearl Harbor Park in Chalmette.

The number of Pearl Harbor survivors left in Louisiana is not known. Two local men, Evans Brassette and David Breedlove, died during the past year, said Debra Jones Posey Barry, whose late father, Ed Jones, also survived the attack. She is president of the Sons & Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors' Louisiana Chapter. A third local veteran, Nolan Albarado, died in August.

"That is why the few who remain healthy enough to join us ... are truly our valued treasures," Barry said in speech written for Saturday's ceremony. "I have been urging, for years, for those who have not met a Pearl Harbor survivor to take this rare opportunity to do so today.

"It started with the many, then went down to a handful, then to those we could count on one hand," she said. "Now we are dwindling down to a few fingers to count them on."

Templet is the son of a sailor whose two brothers also enlisted in the U.S. Navy. In the wake of the Great Depression, he decided he'd follow suit.

"I had just gotten out of high school," he said. "There was no work to be found, so I decided to go see whether I could go enlist in the Navy."

It was Aug. 30, 1940, when he traveled from his home near Raceland to the 400 block of Canal Street in New Orleans, where the military maintained offices in the U.S. Customs House. He climbed the stairs to the Navy office. The officers running the enlistment process sized him up, stripped him down and had him stand on the scale. An officer delivered the bad news.

"I had to weigh 125 pounds. I think I weighed 122 1/2 or 123," Templet said. "So anyway, they saw I was kind of disappointed. So the officer says, 'Tell you what you do. There's a banana wagon on Canal Street. You go buy a bunch of bananas. Eat some bananas and drink some water and then come up here at 1 o'clock or 1:30.' So I did it.

"Boy I was stuffed," he said. "They stripped me down again, put me on the scale. And he said, 'By gosh, you made it, man. Sign up."

After basic training in San Diego, Templet traveled to Pearl Harbor aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma, which would be sunk during the Japanese attack. He was stationed at Ford Island, a small piece of land in the middle of the lagoon harbor, where the Navy had an airfield and submarine berthing. Sailors nicknamed him "Frenchie," he said, because he was from Cajun Louisiana and his last name was pronounced in French fashion: "TOME-play."

He trained at Ford Island to operate radios, a communications job he sought and one that required proficiency in the Morse code. It kept him close to his commanding officers. "Your ears would be tired after you got off of work," he said.

After seeing the asphalt street ripped apart by bullets and the Japanese pilot drop the torpedo, Templet ran toward the mess hall, where he said he received his first order of the war: "Frenchie, man your battle station."

He rushed to his post in the radio shack, a new building with thick walls facing the water. His code name for the day was "White Horse," and he transmitted coded messages for his skipper. He heard the false rumors spreading over the radio, such as a report that Japanese troops landed at Waikiki Beach.

From the radio shack, he saw the burning oil on the water's surface, floating with the current toward the opening of Pearl Harbor. Across the waterway were bombed destroyers in dry docks, he said. "The boys were jumping over in the water and trying to swim. They hit the water to keep the oils away from them."

He witnessed sailors burning in the oil. He saw sailors trying to pull Navy PBY Catalina seaplanes onto the land, and he watched other airplanes being destroyed on the airfield, "the smoke and the fire going up." A huge hangar exploded.

He missed breakfast that day. Lunch, too.

"At 5 o'clock that afternoon, they brought us Nabisco crackers and tomato soup," he said. "I had that for supper."

The attack was over. "After everything was quieting down and the alert was cleared, I went down to see a plane that they shot down," Templet said. "They had these Marine guards guarding the plane, and I knew one of them. I says, 'Hey, buddy, I'd like to get a piece of that plane."

"He says, 'I can't let you. I'll turn around. Do what you're going to do.' So he turned around, and I took a piece about a foot square, made out of silk and plastic that was covering for the planes," he said.

"By the time I got to the barracks, I had a little bitty old piece," he said. "Everybody wanted a piece. So I ended up with a little piece, about an inch and a half square."

Templet spent about 1 1/2 years assigned to Ford Island. His stint in the Navy included a 10-day assignment to a PT squadron and service aboard the ocean-going tug USS Quapaw and an attack cargo transport, the USS Roxane, which he said would anchor about a mile off Pacific islands during deliveries so as to be out of range of snipers.

After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, he helped decommission an armory in Japan, he said. He helped break down and catalog the contents of an LST, or landing ship-tank, in Bremerton Wash., then was sent to San Francisco to be discharged from the Navy as a petty officer first class.

He returned to Louisiana to seek work, eventually accepting a job stocking groceries for H.G. Hills Stores, which later became Winn-Dixie. Thus started a 50-year career that ended with his managing a grocery store in Kenner. In the 1960s, he managed one in New Orleans on Prytania Street at Robert Street, which is no longer there, he said, recalling his brush with another moment in U.S. history.

"This guy Oswald used to shop at my store," he said. "I gave him a Winn- Dixie check-cashing card. And he'd come every Friday evening and cash his check to buy groceries, with his wife and little baby. He was a quiet little thing."

It was Lee Harvey Oswald, before he assassinated President Kennedy. Investigators looking into Oswald's past found Templet's signature on the check-cashing card and so sent agents to question him. "I wouldn't tell them nothing. Three guys. They slapped open their badges," he said with a laugh. He agreed to speak with them only after his bosses authorized it.

Pearl Harbor Survivor Robert TempletPearl Harbor survivor Robert Templet, 93, of Metairie, discusses his thoughts on why people should remember the Dec. 7, 1941 surprise attack on U.S. forces at Hawaii. Templet, who was born in New Orleans and raised in Lafourche Parish, was a 21-year-old Navy radioman third class stationed on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor when he witness the attack unfold. He is believed to be one of only four Pearl Harbor military veterans still living in the New Orleans area. (Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Through the years, his family says, Templet didn't speak much about World War II, until the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Nightmares popped up in 1968, when his oldest son joined the Navy, they say. They stopped after his son was discharged, but returned when another son joined the Air Force.

Templet still has that piece of Japanese airplane he acquired on Dec. 7, 1941, bagged and marked and stored in a plastic bin with his World War II memorabilia. The box includes his wool Navy blues dress uniform that shows just how small he used to be, his first-class petty officer stripes and newspaper clippings.

He chuckles when he tells the story of how he acquired that small piece of fabric. But 72 years later, he still is defenseless against the emotional ambush that accompanies the rest of story.

After he finished work at the radio shack that day, during his walk to see the downed Japanese airplane, Templet said he passed Ford Island's recreational center. The bodies of fallen sailors lined the path.

"They had these sailors wrapped up, lined up," he said, his voice quickly breaking off as he struggled to complete the thought. "That was tough. I can still see them. That was rough. I can still remember them."

NOTE: This story has been changed from its original version. The story as originally published quoted a speech written for the 2013 Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day event, saying that Nolan Albarado's health prevented him from attending. In fact, Mr. Albarado died in August.